Copy prices out there.

As a kid, the first zine I ever participate (and ever read) was photocopied at the town-hall office. We were a no-benefit show promoter (wich sometimes raise public funds in france) and we run a music-distro so we made a fanzine from 2000 to 2006 to promote our shows, a little catalog of the distros, a lot of interviews, reviews, essays... It was copied on the "Department for Culture and Entertainment" of the town-hall, so we never paid for the printings and we made from 200 to 600 copies I guess. I didn't remember, all I know is that : it was free. (and this is how I discover the zines).

When I first wanted to do one by myself, I found that copiers around are truly expensive (€.10 per copy, at least), and I never want to put ads on it so I forgot till I moved to a biggest town, and copy-shop who provides copies from €.04 to €.03 wich is cheaper, and better because they're to busy, so you can copy it all by yourself (but it is pre-paid cards so you can't steal any copies...)

Well, how expensive are your copies in the places you live ? How much do you pay for it ? Can you still steal some of it to reduce the cost ?

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When I stay at my parent's house, I do the same, but it's way more expensive.

Meagan Marly said:

I've got my own photo copier in my home. I don't make mass amounts of copies, I just print off a copy everytime someone asks for a trade or buys one. It comes in handy, but I spend a lot of money on ink and paper.

these are too expensive... having a copier at home is usefull to make the flat, not the hundreds of pages. plus,

a copier like the one at the copy shop cost over than €4.000 (i don't know in the US) and pre-paid card cost €30 for a thousnad of pages. do you really plan to do more than 133.000 copies ? (without the ink cartridge and paper ?). I'm talking about photocopiers for the copies of your zine here, not about the layout.

i find 9 cents per copy is standard here. At one place the price goes down the more you print, i figured if i decided to print 60 copies it was going to be 75 bucks but if i print 100 its 1001 bucks! i havent produced this quantity but it seems like the way to go when ready or able......more is less? i use the work copier for small runs here and there......and my laserprinter actually works really well, i scan the pages into the computer then print out the (even pages 1st) pdf document. I then flip them over and run them through the printer again(odd pages). Its a bit of a process but it works well again for small runs. :)

I go to the UPS Store, and if I prepay for 1,000 copies, it's $30, so 3 cents per copy.

I don't necessarily recommend buying a big, fancy, office size copy machine. I owned one for a while (long story). It was used, but it broke down all the time, even after paying professional copy repairmen (and they were all men) to work on them. It was 50 bucks just to get the repair guy to come to my house and figure out what was wrong. A toner cartridge also cost 50 bucks. I would buy cases of paper when they were on sale.

I was not photocopying my own zines with the machine. I was running a lit to prisoners distro, Lawrence ABC, so granted, I was making a LOT more copies than if I had just been producing my own zines to do trades, etc. Still, it was a HUGE pain in the ass.

One afternoon at the UPS Store, the new looking, shiny clean copier kept jamming every ten pages of so. The worker told me that the machines break down a lot and repair guys have to come out a lot and work on them. I think it's just the way it goes with copiers...

Often those big copiers are owned by the office or shop anyway, they're rented and the rent includes regular servicing. They need to be running regularly (but not too heavily) to keep in good shape too.

Often those big copiers are owned by the office or shop anyway, they're rented and the rent includes regular servicing. They need to be running regularly (but not too heavily) to keep in good shape too.